STUDY ON THE SIMULTANEOUS DETERMINATION OF TRACE AMOUNT OF ELEMENTS IN SYRUP FOR COUGH BY INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA - MASS SPECTROMETRY

Abstract

Concentration of harmful elements (As, Cd, Hg, Pb) and some beneficial elements (Ca, Fe, Se, Zn) in
some cough syrups in the Vietnamese pharmaceutical market were determined by inductively coupled
plasma - mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) after sample digestion in microwave oven. The results of analysis
showed that most of toxic elements are in the limited range of concentration according to the curent
regulations for the limit of heavy metals in supplement food (QCVN 8- 2:2011/ BYT; 46/2007/QĐ-BYT)
or toxic metals in herbal medicines and products (WHO). Concentration of harmful elements ranges from
undetected to 1.097 ppm. Beneficial elements were present in all samples. In particular, concentration
of zinc is the highest of all samples, which can be 14 to 238 times higher than other elements. In the
sample of supplement food, there were lower concentrations of beneficical elements than in drug samples,
in which the concentration of zinc and calcium was lowest and the concentration of the harmful element
cadmium was the highest. The method has low detection limits with ppt level, the relative standard
deviations (% RSD) are less than 15%, and the recovery of elements are in the range from 79.8 % to
101.2 %, which meets AOAC requirements for trace.